M.R.S.C. Mercator - Carrier Log, Day 151 - Day 180
18 Dec 2020FalconFly
Mining and Reconnaissance, Strategic Carrier
The Mission :
The M.R.S.C. Mercator departed into the Arcadian Stream on 20 Jun 3306 for a long-term Exploration Campaign. On Station at a sequence of Waypoints, its Primary Objectives are :
- discover any NSP (Notable Stellar Phenomena), as none was discovered in this Galactic Sector yet
- discover a new Green Gas Giant, which are easily amongst the most rare and elusive Objects in the Galaxy
Secondary Objectives :
- conduct Mining Hotspot Surveys and report high-quality Double Hotspots to the IMU (Intergalactic Mining Union)
- support Explorers in Deep Space with onboard Services
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Mission Time : 152 Days
146 Systems scanned and nothing exciting to report.
After the recent Patch, early Mining Trials look promising despite the continued PWA issues.
Too early to tell and might have been freak luck - but things looked okay'ish today.
The onboard companion also reported good success.
I guess next week's changes will have to tell where things are going, possibly with another Patch.
Being on the outermost boundary of each of the 4 different Sectors had a side-effect I forgot about to check on before moving here.
Not few of the local Systems are "under-seeded", meaning their Sector numbers end with i.e. d4 instead of i.e. d9-4.
That means the Mercator is operating in a region of Boxel outskirts containing many limited seeds only.
While some others reported that such edge cases supposedly produce interesting results in terms of System content, my personal experience so far always has been the polar opposite.
Very high chance of seeing nothing but a few Stars and very few exceptions such as surprisingly high number of bodies.
All in all, I've concluded that this byproduct of the AOR location might still be worth investigating being such an edge case (literally) - but I'll stick to 50LY radius with little hope of finding anything interesting.
This simply is not "heart of the envelope" so to speak, rather the opposite. My new prediction simply is that this entire AOR will end up being vastly dry due to above factors.
I had the idea of centering a future AOR around such a "heart of the envelope" - but early checks on the super high-mass Systems indicated that other CMDRs had already visited the cores of such Systems already.
That'd still leave their surroundings though, so it remains a viable option for the future.
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Mission Time : 154 Days
With some details surfacing about the upcoming Mining changes, it appears the Mercator's Philosophy never to focus on any "meta" will pay off.
Mining has always been evenly spread out across all worthwhile Minerals and Metals, so there's essentially no action required. There's still hope for some Pulse Wave Analyzer fix then - but for the time being mining runs remain fairly limited in scope and everything goes.
The 5th AOR (top right) is now slowly developing into something visible.
At 214 Systems scanned, progress is slow but steady.
As feared, though, the boxel edges of the 4 Sectors aren't really producing anything of interest.
Seems my old experience from such Systems holds up fairly well.
With Pheia Aewsy LV-Y d11 being the only similar one out of 27 documented Green Gas Giant locations in the known Galaxy, I do know they technically can exist in such places.
However - realistically - I have to ask myself : what are the odds?
Alpha rare - and I'm looking in a location where these things are additionally statistically very rare. Not a promising place, simple as that.
However, I shall complete the 50LY radius once I'm here and then move on.
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Mission Time : 155 Days
Still NTR in the 5th AOR, a little Tritium resupplied, 279 Systems done....
Far more importantly, I took a step back... and after 155 Days did some Homework again on Green Gas Giants.
To this date, the consensus on these "Glowing Green Gas Giants" was that there simply was no discernible pattern to them.
After re-evaluating the raw Data on the 27 documented locations, I initially came to the same old conclusion. No pattern.
However, then I took a much further step back and looked at the Galaxy in a completely different way. A rather mathematical way.
A very weak theory I already had in mind, thus this time around I spent a few hours dissecting each location using that different approach.
And lo & behold.... a pattern emerged, a very clear one even. Enough to build a stochastic model based on probabilistic metrics.
Now and with alot of brand new analytical data in my head, a completely new set of candidate regions turned up.
However.... with the new search metrics in mind, turns out the Arcadian Stream with its high System density is actually working against me.
Candidate regions are unfortunately still of considerable size - and the high System density eats up most of the advantage I could get out of my Analysis.
"Pinpointing" a candidate quickly loses its potential when there's easily 50000-100000 stars all around and the Volumes still remain quite large.
So ironically, this Galactic Region might not be the best place simply due to density.
However, I'll attempt to locate candidate regions in areas of lower star density and see if it still works out.
On the positive side, the new insights gained provide alot of new energy to continue and intensify that search.
At the moment it's mere stochastic Analytics and resulting complex 3D Volumes of Uncertainty in my head.
New AOR locations will be defined by above Analysis, making that decision fairly easy.
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Mission Time : 157 Days
360 Systems done, plan right now is to leave NLT 500 Systems being scanned.
The 6th AOR is in its early planning stages and it'll take some time to properly position it.
Location matters more than ever, especially in the light of the recent calculations.
Odds will still remain very low - but that's the reason the new location needs to be optimized as good as possible.
So I merely stick to an old wisdom, the good ol' 6P rule : Proper Preflight Planning Prevents Poor Performance
On the observed Mining changes, looks like the Mercator is absolutely golden with its nicely varied assortment of stored Metals & Minerals.
Going "against the flow" and never sticking to any meta truly paid off, which feels extra good!
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Mission Time : 158 Days
385 Systems are done and a little Mining done.
Found a nice place that was closer than the previous Metallic Painite Hotspot I had at the edge of the AOR so far - and went for some Platinum mining.
AOR Nr. 6 is still being evaluated.
I'll likely spend the better part of tomorrow looking at Panels, Nav Data and be crunching more numbers.
Based on what I already know, a potentially suitable candidate area might be nearby - but its elevation would make it quite a bit experimental.
Lacking enough data, this might best be reserved as a Plan B despite the convenience.
On the other side of the equation, I'll have to verify System Density in more conventional candidate areas. If it's too high, though, I risk losing too much time - negating all the theoretical advantage I might get out of the results from the number crunch.
Sounds awkward after 158 Days in Deep Space - but more homework is needed on this, so I might even stay docked for a day.
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Mission Time : 159 Days
At 404 Systems done, not alot changed in the AOR - as expected. Matches the Mission Objective here so far : Objective not found!
Instead, the empirical Data on Green Gas Giants was thoroughly re-evaluated.
Image btw. was me discovering (not a 1st Discovery) and reporting the odd nature of that Gas Giant in Col 285 Sector VU-M C8-1, as seen on 15 Dec 2016.
I gave it a Tourist Beacon and it became a Passenger Mission Destination, I gave it the name "Radioactive Green" ( Link ) - and the GMP (Galactic Mapping Project, Canonn) attempted to steal & claim discovery + the name half a year later ( Link ).
Needless to say, I'm not friends with the Canonn/GMP - to say the least. I have my reasons and above is one of them.
However this was the only Green Gas Giant I ever saw. Hence, this Alpha rare Object type - a Green Gas Giant - became a Mission Objective.
The Results of my Analysis are presented here :
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/glowing-green-giants-the-definitive-list.418336/page-27#post-8817963
In a nutshell, sticking to outer regions of the 3D Sectors, which are 1280x1280x1280LY in size, appears to be the right place.
Almost all Green Gas Giants so far were found in the outer 1/4 of the Sector volume, meaning within ~320LY of any Sector Boundary (X, Y or Z axis).
While this is a rather interesting pattern and optimizes the Search Volume - it still merely cuts the total scan volume by roughly 25%.
Some optimization to the pattern is likely possible, but my brain is tired at the moment.
I'll try to further optimize the Search Volume in order to maximize the chances for success.
AOR 6 will definitely be located in the best-possible Goldilocks zone that I calculated, that's the best I can do.
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Mission Time : 160 Days
A few more ELWs came in, already thought the area would be completely dry...
451 Systems done and some Metals/Minerals added to Storage again.
The Carrier Campaign here in the 5th AOR is about to be complete, so the rest is merely cleanup work.
Carrier might leave in 48hrs from the looks of it, which I look forward to.
Despite being in Deep Space for over 5 months now, surprisingly it isn't as boring as I once feared it could become.
The brand new Green Gas Giant analysis gave the whole Carrier Campaign a new drive forward, which I appreciate.
Doesn't get much better than this - finding new things to do every once in a while and never running dry on ideas.
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Mission Time : 161 Days
As of today, the 5th AOR is complete !
Stats for this Waypoint :
- 516 Systems scanned
- 4 Earth-like Worlds
- 5 Ammonia Worlds
- 35 Water Worlds
- 2 Water Giants
- 703 Gas Giants
Those stats more or less confirm the "dry" nature of this outlier area located directly at the boundary of 4 adjacent Sectors, marking the outermost areas of each Sector.
Only a bunch of B-Mass Systems would remain and the sampled ones did not look interesting at all.
Well, that was still worth sampling and confirming.
The M.R.S.C. Mercator will move in approx. 12 hours to an optimized area based on my own calculations - in order to primarily seek a Green Gas Giant.
5th AOR (top right) now looking quite well-explored.
This graph basically shows everything the Mercator as accomplished so far, 5 Areas of Responsibility of 50 or 100LY radius and using difference scan patterns & scan density.
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Mission Time : 162 Days
After evaluating and scouting the candidate region, the Mercator has moved to the Eorm Screia TE-Q c5-4 System.
Scan count is already up to 81 + a full-scale Mining run done... good progress.
From here on, the 6th AOR will be sized at a 50LY radius. The plan is to slowly "stitch" AOR onto AOR over time, as adjacent areas are being searched.
System density at this fairly high elevation is quite low, so a 100% scan pattern is being applied.
Technically, this is it. According to my own calculations, there actually might be a Green Gas Giant in the general area.
Time will have to tell if I'm chasing ghosts here or if I am truly onto something.
Overall feedback on my calculations and analysis on stochastic Green Gas Giant 3D Positioning and identifying optimized candidate regions has been quite positive though, so at least I'm not totally off from the looks of it.
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Mission Time : 163 Days
Carrier got refueled with a Tritium resupply run and AOR is up to 175 Systems.
As I'm alone again since a few days - by virtue of my companion getting an Alt Account like many others recently - I'm looking at the Storage, the changed Mineral/Metal prices and consider re-opening the Market Sales.
No idea for how long I'll stay alone again after all, so that's an Option.
On the 100% scan pattern, I rechecked all data and it seems that would not be optimal.
As the projected scan volume remains huge, all available optimizations must be used. Hence, the scan pattern will be optimized as well, which should accelerate the progress considerably.
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Mission Time : 164 Days
220 Systems done and remaining cleanup using the optimized pattern has only a few dozen Systems left to do.
Carrier Markets sales have re-opened, although at more conservative prices than before.
Given the economic dynamics that have set in, currently no need to "vent" valuable Cargo overboard at very low prices.
Instead of moving the Carrier to a 7th AOR directly after this one is completed, I'm evaluating the Option to do a Sector circumnavigation using one of the TEVs.
Maybe I stumble across something and then can move the Carrier there to establish an ad-hoc AOR.
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Mission Time : 165 Days
AOR 6 is now complete after the last cleanup run...
Stats for this area :
- 269 Systems scanned
- 3 Earth-like Worlds
- 7 Ammonia Worlds
- 23 Water Worlds
- 1 Water Giant
- 343 Gas Giants scanned
As planned, instead of immediately moving to AOR 7, a TEV (Tactical Exploration Vessel) will depart the Mercator tomorrow.
I'll take it around the entire Sector to sample the whole Eorm Screia Sector Candidate Region at least once.
Although unlikely to find anything, I want to have a rough estimate as what to expect all around the Sector.
On top, I want to set the Primary Mission Objectives aside for a short while and just.... well, explore.
After all, no Biologicals have been found and I'm notorious for tagging Neutron Stars to be fed into the Neutron Route Plotter database. Always a worthy cause.
Should feel good to breathe some "fresh air" outside fixed Areas of Responsibility.
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Mission Time : 166 Days
The TEV Douglas has ventured about 1000LY from the Carrier and scanned plenty of B Star Systems and alot of Neutron Systems.
Apart from a few Earth-like Worlds and one Discovery of Biologicals, nothing to report though.....
Instead of cornering around the entire Sector, the Ship is already enroute back to the Carrier, as the scan along the Sector Boundary revealed nothing out of the ordinary.
Although a nice change of pacing, this excursion yielded not much, so I prefer to continue building a new AOR.
On a personal sidenote, another tiny Milestone has been achieved : EDSM Ranking for Systems 1st discovered passed Rank 90.
While nothing of significance is being discovered, climbing up some Numbers and Ranks is better than nothing....
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Mission Time : 167 Days
The Mercator is now on Station at Eorm Screia JD-I b10-0.
As opposed to previous AORs, this 7th AOR is basically a continuation of the 6th across the Candidate Region in order to provide continuous scanning.
That also means that AOR progress can't be easily measured anymore, since the radius of a new AOR can overlap with a previous one.
For that reason, I'll start using an estimated Campaign Totals to track progress by using a larger radius to count scanned Systems.
On the pro side of things, that way Out-of-Area operations are included for what it's worth.
According to the data, a total of 8491 Systems have been scanned during this Campaign so far.
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Mission Time : 169 Days
Not much to report...
Some more Systems have been scanned in the AOR but primarily some more Data on Green Gas Giants was crunched.
I was requested to evaluate a possible correlation of Green Gas Giants with Neutron Stars, so I did.
The Analysis and Data didn't reveal much, though.
The only notable thing was that indeed the vast majority of Green Gas Giants were located within ~100-120LY of a Neutron Star with many being well within 100LY of one.
Not much to work with, though, since there were outliers with >300LY distance to a Neutron.
Other than that, the TEV Douglas ventured off again some 1000LY and is in the process of checking a series of O Class and Neutron Stars along the way.
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Mission Time : 170 Days
The Out-of-Area operations are continuing throughout the Eorm Screia Sector.
Many Black Holes, B and O Star Systems and countless Neutron Stars were scanned.
This should easily take another day, as the TEV Douglas is criss-crossing the entire Sector.
After that, it's back to the AOR to continue to fill it with meat.
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Mission Time : 171 Days
Home sweet home....
The TEV Douglas has returned to the Mercator with almost 200 Systems sampled throughout the Eorm Screia Sector.
Nothing too fancy but some nice scenery and some interesting System constellations, definitely worth it.
There's still a whole bunch of G Mass Systems left, so that's something that can be done again at anytime here in the area.
Although I had a look at many Gas Giants that I encountered, sadly no signs were found of what I'm looking for.
Could be there's no Green Gas Giant in the entire Sector... could be there's one in a leftover B Mass System within 100LY, right under my nose in the previous AOR. And I wouldn't know.
Oh well, the search continues!
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Mission Time : 172 Days
The 7th AOR is making good progress, it seems it might complete within the next few days.
After this local area is complete, another Out-of-Area phase will commence, which is more like classic Exploration. No point in leaving so many interesting Systems behind.
No idea yet on the 8th AOR, although I'd like the to take the old lady all the way up near the top of the Sector, as it's a Candidate region just like the current floor area of that Sector is.
As a Bonus, the even lower System Density there should allow for very swift progress.
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Mission Time : 173 Days
Scan count within 100LY around AOR 7 (a range which includes AOR 6) is up to a total of 481 Systems.
Tomorrow, I'll take out a TEV to sample the entire Sector again, incl. performing a pre-scouting of a possible AOR 8 that'll come sooner or later.
Although slowly approaching 6 months of Operations in Deep Space now, strangely I'm still "hot" and on track to continue searching.
Things are currently very calm - being all alone again - but after all, I only recently moved the Carrier into an optimized Candidate Region.
Since that's purely based on my own Theory and Analysis, I do try to verify and confirm that very Theory of course... however, this requires success on the most rare body type in the known Galaxy.
That'll take time, one way or another. So far, other CMDRs possibly following and testing that published Theory haven't reported anything yet just as well, so at least I'm not "behind schedule"
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Mission Time : 174 Days
The TEV Maximon - a trusty long-range Diamondback Explorer - has traversed the Eorm Screia Sector to its upper outermost limits.
System Density is extremely low, even lower than expected.
Hard to tell if AOR 8 will make sense up there, although it'd be definitely possible.
The TEV (Tactical Exploration Vessel) even broke the upper layers of the Eorm Screia Sector and ventured beyond 2500 Elevation.
Up there, the nearly 100% unexplored Phlaingiae Sector marks the outermost limit and a few Systems were scanned using Fuel Management and mild FSD Injections before dropping back down.
Still plenty of high-mass Systems await, enough for several Out-of-Area Operations, which is nice and very useful as a distraction from working fixed AORs.
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Mission Time : 175 Days
AOR 7 is almost complete now, with only fairly few Systems remaining.
As no definitive AOR 8 candidate has been found yet, the TEV Argonaut has been dispatched to scout a broader area within the defined candidate regions.
I kinda like the idea of "topping off" and heading up high, though, so that's the most likely choice.
Total Campaign count can only be estimated at this point - but this number crossed 9000 scanned Systems today for what it's worth.
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Mission Time : 176 Days
Technically, the AOR 7 is complete...
However, one of the last remaining Systems showed me something that catched my eye : a Class I Gas Giant that looked different.
Different enough for me to notice - and put that entire D-Mass Boxel onto the ToDo list before leaving.
Although only a weak theory of mine, such a small anomaly was exactly what I was hoping to see at some point while scouting the entire Sector.
A breadcrumb, possibly (and hopefully) leading me to something.
Now it's time to put that theory to a test, which shouldn't take longer than another day; maybe some ~50 or so Systems to check.
A part of that D-Mass Boxel cut through the AOR, so a few were already scanned.
On the upcoming movement plan, I was able to identify a suitable candidate for AOR 8.
However, recently sampling the roof and seeing that almost 100% unexplored Phlaingiae Sector above the Eorm Screa Sector gave me a better idea :
The Mercator has never used its prime advantage - its Jumprange - to conduct fully Carrier-based Exploration.
And since its pristine nature means no Earth-like World has ever been reported for this Sector - time to do some oldschool Exploration and change that.
Tritium Reserves are very solid, thus no harm in investing some of that. The TEV Aurora should sport enough Jumprange to fill in a few blanks without having to move the Carrier each and every single System.
Sounds like a worthy cause and time to have some fun.
Challenge : accepted !
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Mission Time : 177 Days
After checking the D-Mass Boxel (which did not yield much except one ELW), the AOR 7 is now officially complete and the Mercator has entered the Phlaingiae Sector.
There, the Carrier will dynamically operate throughout the entire Sector with the Objective to discover and report the very 1st Earth-like World for that specific Sector.
With System Density being very low upto extremely low, the big rig will perform a considerable amount of the Jumps and move frequently.
Where feasible, the TEV Aurora will capitalize on its Jumprange to supplement the Carrier and help to conserve some Tritium.
Combined stats for AOR 7, which was a fluid extension of AOR 6 :
- 606 Systems scanned
- 5 Earth-like Worlds
- 10 Ammonia Worlds
- 49 Water Worlds
- 6 Water Giants
- 900 Gas Giants scanned
The AORs 6 & 7 (top right) in the left Image show the applied extension of the interconnected scan areas of 50LY radius each.
The right Image is a new function of ED Astrometrics and displays number of Bodies per scanned System.
It shows that I was very thorough as usual - at a sustained 100% scan discipline per System. No body left behind, not in thousands of Systems.
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Mission Time : 178 Days
Well, that was faster than I expected....
The TEV Aurora found the very 1st Earth-like World ever discovered in the Phlaingiae Sector. Nice!
Had quite some errands to run, so progress was slower than planned.
Overall progression with using the Mercator as a highly mobile FOB (Forward Operating Base) and the longrange Aurora utilizing FSD Synthesis scanning typically only a few reachable Systems is far slower than usual anyway.
Still.... a nice catch, didn't expect that ELW to turn up so quickly.
I'll likely continue exploring this very remote Sector for a while, as it's absolutely pristine and still only very few Systems are documented.
By the way, docking at the Mercator is currently.... well, rather interesting.
Being located around a Neutron Star (Phlaingiae KR-W d1-0) isn't something unusual - but that very Neutron being a mere 2730km (!) from the Mercator surely is.
Approach to the Carrier isn't entirely unsafe - but requires alot of confidence and close monitoring of that very approach to say the least!
(and yes - I did of course manage to slam into the exclusion zone of that Neutron
)
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Mission Time : 179 Days
After the long-overdue Firmware Update for the malfunctioning Pulse Wave Analyzer, finally some normal Mining again.
After full-scale Mining trials, everything seemed to work as expected today.
Apart from getting a good fill again, nice view from up here.
With 6 months of Deep Space Operations coming up, time to look at the Primary Objectives.
Sadly, none of them were achieved despite best efforts.
Although not a hard timer, I think it's a good idea to move these into the background and continue the Campaign with a more classic focus.
The Phlaingiae Sector did not yield much of particular interest, so the Mercator will leave it again within 24 hours.
Plenty of Tritium and FSD Synthesis Materials have been invested and at least I got what I came for.
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Mission Time : 180 Days
Well.... it's been 6 months since the M.R.S.C. Mercator departed from HIP 60953 to conduct its Deep Space Survey.
Half a year in the black.... damn.
Operations in the Phlaingiae Sector have concluded and the Carrier is back in the Eorm Screia Sector.
The Primary Mission Objectives weren't achieved, which was always a possibility.
There's a chance that there simply is no NSP in the Arcadian Stream - or that it's just an extremely rare type noone has found yet. No way to tell.
Green Gas Giants are ultra rare by Design - so finding one still boils down to sheer luck, best available Theory doesn't change much about that.
So now - after half a year - the Mercator shall shift focus onto classic Exploration, which primarily means seeking new Earth-like Worlds and map anything Biological when encountered.
Instead of working Areas of Responsibility (AORs), the Carrier will freely operate within the Arcadian Stream as Fuel Reserves permit.
Total Campaign Stats are a bit coarse but do cover the entire Area of Operations :
- 9094 Systems scanned
- 85 Earth-like Worlds
- 115 Ammonia Worlds
- 1018 Water Worlds
- 74 Water Giants
- 9568 Gas Giants scanned
- 17023 Stars in total
- 96206 Bodies in total
